Today’s Rhapsody is an Irish Rhapsody by Clare Grundman
Today’s sketch is a group of details from the painting Christ Before Pilate by a “Painter from Cologne” It was done sometime in the 16th century in oil on wood and is an example of Antwerp Mannerism. I have to say this is one of my favorite works in the Seattle Art Museum’s permanent collection. I love the attention that the artist gives to the faces as well as the attention to detaill. In fact I initially started doing this sketch because I liked the “Roman” soldier’s helmet. Which brings me to why I really like this piece.
Whatever my opinion of religion is, I like religious art. I think it’s how you can push the viewers buttons using an arsenal of symbolic vocabulary… What I really like about this piece is the way the artist does this painting as a 16th century period piece. If it wasn’t for the very familiar looking prisoner we would think it was just business as usual at a Hanseatic League meeting hall. Sometimes I wish that modern artists would keep doing this. Religious art these days is really bad most of it being these awful paint by numbers crap, personally I blame Reader’s Digest. They try to be “accurate” but in a way this makes it worse by drawing attention to all of the errors. After a while you have to ask yourself why bother? If Raphael was able to paint Roman Legionaries as conquistadors why can’t a modern artist put them into fatigues and flak jackets?
Today’s Rhapsody is Franz Liszt‘s 11th Hungarian Rhapsody performed by Grigory Ginzburg.
Today’s sketch is one of Rodin‘s many studies for his statue of Balzac. This one being from the Seattle Art Museum. (Of course there have been several times when I have been surprised when a Museum does NOT have a study of Balzac or the Thinker by Rodin.
Today’s Rhapsody is the first of Dvorak‘s Slavic Rhapsodies (Opus 45)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icJcbgATeCM
Today is just a small collection from one of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts Roman art rooms. Mostly a bunch of generic portraits. I’ve always liked this facet of roman art that takes a mostly realistic approach to portraiture to the point where after a while you get more value out of them by looking at a long series of historical mug shots… in a good way.